2026 Utilitarian World Cup Fan Guide

Bar height is the score, tallest first (leader fixed at 100). Click a country for its full detail.

Tick the boxes under the bars, then

In 2014 I wrote a short piece for The New York Times with a simple premise. A World Cup is watched by billions, and a title sets off real joy in the winning country. If you have no dog in the fight, you get to choose your dog. So pick the one whose win does the most good. Add up the happiness a championship would create, and root for the country at the top. That year the math pointed to Nigeria.

The 2026 tournament is bigger and, for this exercise, better. Forty-eight teams instead of thirty-two, and a field that reaches deeper into the places the model cares about most: lower-income countries, and first-timers like Cape Verde, Curacao, Jordan and Uzbekistan. Lets update this, add some more nuance, and take advantage of the AI-world to make this auto-update and more sophisticated at a fraction of the cost to do this.

The logic is similar, but with added nuance. A title's value to the world rises with three things. How many people care, which is population times how much a country follows the game. How much a windfall is worth to them, which is larger where incomes are lower, because the same joy means more to someone who has less (or, one arrives at the same implication if instead you just prefer to increase the utility more for those who have less to begin with, in line with utilitarianism as well as several other philosophical constructs). And how long the joy lasts. A country that wins all the time forgets quickly. A country that has never won remembers for a generation. We put that last idea where it belongs, in the discount rate. The memory of an unaccustomed win fades slowly, so its value today is higher.

One refinement matters most. Fans are not only the home population, so we add the diaspora and a share of the neighbors who feel a regional win as their own. This is partly motivated by a simple observation. Whenever I have asked an African over the past few weeks who they are rooting for, and their own country is not in it, they still name another African side and talk about the pride of the continent. So we weight that continental affinity most heavily for Africa and Asia, on the theory that neither has ever won a World Cup and the shared pride at stake is greater than for Europe or South America. A deep run by Morocco lifts North Africa and the millions of Moroccans abroad, not only the home crowd.

The headline answer: Democratic Republic of Congo! Nearly a hundred million people, a deep love of the game, very low incomes, and no World Cup pedigree to take for granted. A title there would land where the marginal value of joy is highest, and it would be remembered for years.

But a champion is crowned only once. The tournament gives joy every night, and the best of it comes from surprise. So the default view above is not who should win the whole thing. It is who is beating expectations. Each team starts with a bar, its pre-tournament odds of reaching each round. Clearing a low bar is what thrills. A long shot that reaches the quarterfinals delivers more joy than a favorite who was supposed to be there all along, and the deeper the run, the more it counts. The odds set the bar. They never shrink the reward, so underdogs are rewarded, not penalized.

Note: The weight on lower incomes is a value judgment, not a measurement, so the tool lets you turn the dial yourself.

So this year, root for the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Or use the guide above to see who to pull for tonight.

Links to similar prior year guides by me and others: 2014 The original (NYTimes Upshot, by Karlan) 2014 Reconsidered (NYTimes Upshot, by Karlan) 2018 A Utilitarian's Guide (Oxford, by Zohny) 2022 Support Brazil or Cameroon (CGD, by Crawfurd, Mitchell and Wickstead)

Future Matches

Every upcoming fixture with both teams set. In each one, root for the highlighted team: the one with the higher score from the chart above, under the view you picked.

Technical appendix: how the index is built

The model

For each country i, the value of a title is the product of three terms, W = N x MU x V.

N, reach. Engaged home fans, which is population times how much the country follows the game, plus the diaspora, plus a share of co-confederation neighbors who share a regional win. That continental share is largest for Africa and Asia, neither of which has won a World Cup, and smallest for Europe and South America.
MU, need. The same joy is worth more to a country with less, the standard economics of diminishing marginal utility. So we weight each country by how poor it is. A country whose people consume half as much per head as another counts, at the default setting, for roughly twice as much. One parameter sets how hard we lean toward the poor: crank it up and we favor the poor even more; lower it toward zero and we favor them less, until at zero everyone counts the same. Which value to choose is ultimately a question for the philosopher and the social planner. The tilt toward the poor is always on. We also add a subsistence amount to consumption before taking the weight, so the very poorest are weighted similarly, though never identically, and one extreme outlier does not dwarf every other team.
V, memory. A title is a glow that fades, and we value the present value of that fading stream rather than a single moment. Pedigree sets how fast it fades. A serial winner's glow is largely gone in about four years; a country with no history holds it for around fourteen.

Performance relative to expectations (the default view)

The bar is each team's pre-tournament chance of reaching each knockout round, from an Elo simulation of the real bracket. The surprise of a run is how unlikely it was, summed over the rounds the team reaches and weighted so deeper rounds count for more. The odds set the bar. They never weight the welfare, so the method rewards underdogs rather than favorites. A second toggle compares the live standing with the frozen pre-tournament one.

Data sources

Population and consumption: World Bank World Development Indicators (population, and GNI per capita at purchasing power parity).
The 48-team field and the group draw: FIFA (final draw, 5 December 2025).
Team strength and the expectation bar: World Football Elo Ratings (eloratings.net).
Soccer interest: Google Trends, FIFA Big Count registered players, and a curated culture and television-reach score.
Diaspora size: United Nations international migrant-stock estimates.
Pedigree and best prior finishes: World Cup and continental championship records.
Live results and fixtures: football-data.org.

The evidence behind the joy

That happiness tracks surprise: Rutledge, Skandali, Dayan and Dolan (2014), Mellers et al. (1997), Koszegi and Rabin (2006). That it fades, faster with repetition: Frederick and Loewenstein (1999). That a shocking, meaningful win is remembered for years: Brown and Kulik (1977). That the daily mood bump itself is brief: Stieger, Goetz and Gehrig (2015). On the size of the wellbeing effect of national sporting success: Kavetsos and Szymanski (2010).

Caveats

Diaspora, interest and pedigree figures are documented estimates.
The size of the happiness bump is a flat assumed value.
Not yet incorporated: upset losses can raise domestic violence (Card and Dahl 2011), and the losing finalist's fans are let down.

Produced using Claude.ai code.